I have raided with good spriest this teir...You guys are just bad...Spriest are mid in the pack of dps...and top 5 for top 100...Sounds like user error to me. Go do some more flavor of the expac class swapping...

Since you decided to, as a boomkin, make your way to the shadow forums and have a discussion, let's have one. I always like when people post things like this and also include something in their signature so I can find them. I'm assuming you're the guild on 10 man guild on Skullcrusher that finished top 900 world/top 300 US and just killed Lei Shen 2 weeks ago, correct?

While your logs look alright as a boomkin, the majority of your DPS parse awfully low, so it may seem that your spriest is good. HOWEVER, the fact of the matter is that your spriest is not that great and neither is the rest of your DPS, judging by the logs I found.

I'm aware we're losing a good 20-40% uptime on uvls due to rppm changes, however we're also going to see much more value to crit through increased crit damage. Guaranteed crit still on the other hand scales with our spell power. I don't think this trinket is going to be as bad as you think it is.

I'm aware we're losing a good 20-40% uptime on uvls due to rppm changes, however we're also going to see much more value to crit through increased crit damage. Guaranteed crit still on the other hand scales with our spell power. I don't think this trinket is going to be as bad as you think it is.

Who had 40% uptime on UVLS. The proc gods must REALLY be in your favor. Something to also be noted, is that all the trinkets got big buffs come 5.4. Wushoolays is going to be insane for it. I'm trying to get my hands on one for 5.4 to replace my UVLS.

Who had 40% uptime on UVLS. The proc gods must REALLY be in your favor. Something to also be noted, is that all the trinkets got big buffs come 5.4. Wushoolays is going to be insane for it. I'm trying to get my hands on one for 5.4 to replace my UVLS.

Got 528 on my priest. What will happen? 10 stacks in 10 seconds with insane proc chance, like Feather for Strength users?

Who had 40% uptime on UVLS. The proc gods must REALLY be in your favor. Something to also be noted, is that all the trinkets got big buffs come 5.4. Wushoolays is going to be insane for it. I'm trying to get my hands on one for 5.4 to replace my UVLS.

I think they mean a 20%-40% loss on the uptime they had on the trinket (I.e. 10% -> ~6%-8%).

My server is quite dead too, there's only one 25-man raiding guild, the rest are 10-mans. I'm not "pro" either, but I do enjoy running current content rather than waiting to outgear instances. Kudos for being lucky enough to have a decent raiding group with your friends.

That being said, the question was if shadow will be competitive in 5.4. I'm not saying you can't pull a 25-man with 4 SP, sure you can. Heck I've done 10-druid runs since WotLK, and we just saw a MV clear with 25 DKs. But as you said yourself, you're in it for the fun, not the progress.

People who are in it for the progress will try to set up their raid groups to maximize the advantages given by each spec. In 25-man that's not a problem, but as we've pointed out repeatedly, the majority of raiding groups are 10-man. With only 5-6 dps spots, at least two of which should be melee due to encounter mechanics, a 10-man has to choose between mage/lock/hunter/boomkin/elemental/shadow for those 3 ranged dps spots. Ideally a group should be able to choose any of those specs without significant disadvantages, but the truth is that mage & lock have been (and still are) notorious "outliers", so they are both obvious choices. That leaves ONE spot for hunter/ele/balance/shadow.

From a casual PoV: two. I'd rather take 1 melee and 4 ranged DPS, except Garalon, but HoF is the AIDS of Shadow anyway. Disc does traditionally very well in 10m (but the people who say disc > holy in 5.4 are in for a surprise), so you get him in as 3rd healer with a shadow off spec. You also don't want to run too cloth heavy (true in both guild run and PuG but less in the latter) as you address below.

For 10-man groups (not only hardcore, this applies to casual too) expecting to progress through an instance, an obvious objective is to gear up their players as soon and efficiently as possible in order to make content more accesible. The unique problem shadow has is that it shares loot with mage/lock, so the obvious choice is to bring a hunter/boomkin/ele so you make proper use of leather / mail drops and you don't have to split one item class between 3 players (or even 4 if you run with a priest healer). And even if, for whatever reason, your group decides to bring another int-cloth player: Why would you bring a shadow priest instead of another mage/lock?

From a casual/PuG PoV: because the shadow priest is a better player than the warlock, or because shadow is generally easier to play than warlock. Now I am not saying the latter is true, but in Cataclysm the difference between a good and a mediocre warlock was in and far between while with less effort you could just play a shadow priest.

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Originally Posted by YankeePhan1234

After the Combustion nerf/Shadow buffs/Boomkin changes I think caster wise it's going to look like this in 5.4:

Lock>Spriest>Arcane Mage>Ele>Fire Mage>Boomkin

Funny, our boomkin said the Starsurge nerf is rather minor. Their stats priority did change though. Elemental nerfs have been revisioned, too.

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Originally Posted by Karreck

Hi, raiding shadow priest since Vanilla. You do not speak for us real shadow priests. The state of Shadow is laughable as any real shadow priest will tell you. Since BC we have lost a lot of our unique flavor and support abilities and gained little DPS wise to off set this. Real shadow priests do not want to be overpowered and topping DPS charts with ease, but we want to be able to be competitive. Currently, we are not.

And kindly stop trying to equate random BG's with the current state of shadow priest raiding.

Raid mechanics such as Will of the Emperor's Combo, Garalon's Weak Point or Iron Qon's Molten Overload favor melee/ranged balanced groups. Yes, once you outgear the content you can run it with 10 DKs or druids.

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Originally Posted by lolalola

From a casual/PuG PoV: because the shadow priest is a better player than the warlock, or because shadow is generally easier to play than warlock. Now I am not saying the latter is true, but in Cataclysm the difference between a good and a mediocre warlock was in and far between while with less effort you could just play a shadow priest.

I also play a demo / destro lock. Destro is "DPS for dummies". Demo is fun, but it's not significantly harder than shadow. And if your argument is going for an "easier to play spec", then you go frost mage or destro lock, not shadow priest.